


Building Bridges

by Lex_Munro



Series: Stories From the Fateverse [8]
Category: Avengers (Comic), Thor (2011), X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Sci-fi, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Brief Language, Bromance, Crossover, Dimension-Hopping, Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-14
Updated: 2011-06-14
Packaged: 2017-10-22 16:41:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/240179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lex_Munro/pseuds/Lex_Munro
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Cartographer journeys to several different Asgards to get their Bifrost/Tesseract tech back up-and-running after a certain god of thunder smashed the Bifrost bridge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Building Bridges

**Author's Note:**

> crosses over with [Blood & Tears](http://archiveofourown.org/works/238816).
> 
> a little Cartographer, because i wanted to fiddle with the idea of Network relations with Asgard.
> 
>  **warnings:**   AU - Fateverse, BT-verse (alternate movieverse).  sci-fi with technobabble.  minor spoilers for the Thor movie.  language: pg (for damn).
> 
>  **pairing:**   none/gen (though i will warn you that i'm a Thorki fan).
> 
>  **timeline:**   HAH.  i don't need no steenking timeline.  it's in the Blood & Tears universe (which is a slightly off-kilter Marvel Movieverse that manages to reconcile all the movies to-date), before Logan and Wade get back together, and before Tony and the Avengers are in New York, but after Thor's little adventure in New Mexico.
> 
>  **disclaimer:**   marvel owns all the characters, i just made more alternate universe versions of them.
> 
>  **notes:**   1) Three (Programmer 003) is a Forge.  kind of a party-animal!Forge.  in his defense, he works his butt off for the Network, and Asgardians really know how to party.  2) the movie-verse Asgardians have adopted Three as their version of Tyr.  the comic-verse version of Tyr is a little lame and far-off-the-mark of the mythological version... but Tyr is a warrior-philosopher kind of god, and is considered one of the bravest gods because only he had the courage to venture close enough to Fenrir to feed the captive beast.  Tyr is missing his right hand because he placed it in Fenrir's mouth as a show of good faith (Fenrir bit it off when it turned out the gods had just been trying to get close enough to chain him up), so my brain went straight to a bizarre Tyr-Forge analogy.  3) Frey (or Freyr) is a Norse god of weather, fertility, and success.  he helped build much of Asgard.  4) the Vanir are gods of fertility and wisdom.  5) Heimdall (or Heimdallr) is the all-seeing, all-hearing sentry of Asgard.  in this case, tall, dark, and long-suffering (Idris Elba was so fabulous in the movie...).  6) Nidavellir is the home of the dwarves, Svartalfheim is the home of the dark elves, and Alfheim is the home of the elves.  7) Dvergar are Norse dwarves.  8) "Bifrost-based point-to-point non-lateral flatscale timesliding" ... it's just moving from one exact location to another through space but not time by use of the Bifrost bridge.  there's a little about it in the **Fateverse Glossary**.
> 
> visit [The Fateverse Glossary](http://merianmoriarty.deviantart.com/art/Fateverse-Glossary-174203180) for terms, concepts, Nodes, and important people.

**Building Bridges**

 

It’s often best, Steven has learned, to go with the flow.  His resonant signature is heavy enough to have a mind-altering effect on most people he meets, whether he likes it or not, so there’s a tendency for people to fawn and exclaim.

The first time he visited an Asgard, the natives tried very hard to make him stay.  More than that, they’d tried to add him to their number, put him in their histories which were-and-weren’t myths, and the corresponding Earths experienced some slightly confusing shifts in the names and numbers of their pantheons.  After some lengthy discussions, it was decided (mostly without Steven’s input) that this was a perfectly acceptable state of affairs.

“Just go with it,” Programmer 001 had advised.

It became the mantra.

If some newly contacted timeline wanted to enthrone Steven, _just go with it_.  If they wanted to make him some kind of celebrity, _just go with it_.  If they wanted to declare a holiday for him, name their children after him, add a god to their religion, _just go with it_.

The Theorists all nodded very seriously at the advice.  Some of them even showed Steven the calculations to prove that resisting the effect he had on timelines could actually damage them.

So here he is, ready to visit 52155-3939 for the first time because Programmer 003 said the calming effect of his signature might be useful.

He sighs while he watches Three check the contents of a small bag of tools.

“Whenever you’re ready,” Three says, still poking around in the depths of the bag.

“Magellan, lateral slide.  Destination primary BT, approximately three years downstream of point-oh.  Desired landing site, Asgard, Valhalla, entrance.”

There’s a beep of completed triangulation.  Steven’s other three Nodes are very good at finding times and places and matching them up to colloquial titles.  He has no doubt they will arrive as close to the specified destination as safety allows.

“Initiate timeslide.”

A brief rushing sensation, flashing light, and _there_.

“Are we going to have to do this for each bundle stemming from the MM locus?” he asks.

“Just the big ones,” Three replies.  “It’ll propagate.  We’ve been doing the calculations, that’s why it’s taken us this long to get around to it.  That, and there wasn’t any real rush for most of them.  No irreparable harm just yet.  As long as we eventually got around to hopping back a few years and fixing things, it’d all snap into place.  That’s what Six says, anyhow, and that kid spins my head with how much Theory he’s got knocking around in that interdimensional switchboard he calls a brain.  Besides, MM-derivative Asgards are very hospitable.  They like me here.  Might as well party it up, right?”

Steven finds that to be a very irresponsible attitude, and says so.

“Oh, come on, Steve…  It’s good to kick back and enjoy a friendly welcome now and then.”

“I get a friendly welcome _everywhere_ ,” Steven points out.  “I never get used to it, and it never feels any less discomfiting.  Dang it, I’m an _explorer_ , not a _deity_.”

The Programmer nods, but Steven knows it’s from agreeability rather than agreement.

And then they straighten up as a patch-eyed old man in fine robes steps out of the huge hall before them.

Old.  He’s probably a few hundred years _younger_ than Steven, and _younger still_ than Three.  Steven feels guilty about that for no particular reason.

“Tyr!” the man exclaims, arms spread wide in welcome.  “We did not look to your coming for many years yet.”

Three just waves a hand through the air.  “You should know, Lord, to expect me when things break.”

“Indeed.”  The old man claps Three enthusiastically on the shoulder.

Steven waits for Three to introduce them.

“Oh!  My manners,” Three says, waving an arm at Steven.  “Lord Odin, this is my comrade, Steven.  He is…an envoy, of sorts.  An ambassador.  Steven, Lord Odin is King of Asgard.”

Steven knows this—it’s not his first Asgard, thanks.

Odin clasps Steven’s forearm firmly.  “A comrade of our comrade is welcome here.  Come!  I will not have you work without first being supped.”

This is how Steven is dragged into the awkward situation of attending his first Asgardian banquet.

There is laughter, and singing, and a great boom of storytelling from a large man who insists on speaking with his mouth full.  The mirth and merrymaking are occasionally punctuated by a crash of broken crockery that Three assures Steven is a perfectly polite way of asking for a fresh beverage.

 _Just go with it_ , he tells himself a trifle desperately.  It’s really no stranger than a diplomatic banquet aboard a starship full of aliens.

Briefly, he looks around the boisterous chaos of the dining hall and can picture a certain race in particular.

Yes, Klingons would fit in very well here.

“Tell me of your adventures, young Thor!” Three presses, holding a hand up somewhere near chest-height.  “Last time I was here, you were this high and clamoring for a sword that wasn’t made of wood.  And where has your brother got to?”

Steven can see a flash of sorrow on the young god’s face and nudges Three with his elbow.  “We need to get to work.”

Three shows his opinion of that by downing the last of his drink and pitching the empty mug to the floor.

“You are a dour man, Sir Steven,” Thor tells him with a lopsided grin.  “Is your work so pressing that you cannot enjoy your food and drink?”

“His work,” Steven corrects.  He leans out of the way when a pretty girl brings Three’s next drink.  She smiles at him.  He ignores her.  “Three—er, _Tyr_ —is meant to be examining your point-to-point non-lat—your _bridge_.”

Thor’s brows rise at that, and his eyes take on an eager light.  “You are come to repair the Bifrost?” he asks Three.

Mouth full, Three just waves his mechanical right hand eloquently and nods.

“Eat faster, then!  To your task, man!”

Three takes a swallow of wine and laughs.  “Got a girl waiting somewhere?  What does pretty little Sif think of that?”

Thor scoffs.  “Sif likes Jane.  She has a great respect for wisdom and the practice of science, as you well know.”

“A scientist, eh?” says Three.  “Jane.  A very nice name.  All right, we’ll get to work, then—for the sake of Miss Jane.”

A man named Frey leads them out onto the shattered bridge, where the gatekeeper gazes into the black void of space.

Three investigates the ragged end, running scans that Steven doesn’t really understand.  Steven has never understood much about the engineering aspects of the timestream.  He knows enough to get by.  He knows enough to tell Howard or Anthony that something is broken and _not_ try to fix it himself.

“Do you still have the blueprints?” Three asks.

“Somewhere,” Frey confirms.  “I was hoping you might bring a copy so that I don’t have to go looking…  There’s always the possibility that I did something silly like using them for scrap paper while I was inventing something else.  You know how I am.”

Three nods and knocks his metal fist on the bridge (it makes a ringing crystalline noise).  “Well, unless you think the Vanir can come up with about a thousand cubic feet of Bifrost crystal in their vaults, you’ll need to fly out yourself and trade for some.  Heimdall, have a look, will you?  Maybe Nidavellir or Svartalfheim.”

The gatekeeper sighs, like a man being asked to change the channel from his favorite TV show so that someone can check the score of a sports game.  “Alfheim,” he says after a moment.  “The Alfar appear to have plentiful supply of Bifrost crystal, Lord Tyr.”

“Oh, good!” Three exclaims, digging around in his bag of tools.  “That’ll save time.  We’ve got a timetable to meet, after all.”  He pulls out a small data projector, which shows a segment of a TMS.

Frey leans close.  “If that’s us, there…we’ve got less than a year to repair the bridge!  Why didn’t you say so?  Where’s your sense of urgency, man?!  This isn’t a problem that can be solved with time-travel, you know—there’s no way to step out of time to repair _our_ Bifrost.  This is a six-month job at the very least, even with Dvergar helping all the way.  Odin save us all from daft Fidelis Engineers…”

“I am _not_ daft,” snorts Three.

Steven has to bite his lip to keep from disagreeing.

Three zooms in on part of the TMS.  “Okay, so…get the crystal from Alfheim…recruit workers from Nidavellir…”  He pauses and looks up.  “You know, it might be faster to go to Earth and point out ether resonance to them.  They should have a good supply of vibranium—which, of course, can be crystallized into Bifrost.  Steve, who did you say was in charge of this version of Earth?”

Steven has a good memory for details like that.  Thank goodness.  “Their version of SHIELD should be growing pretty well by now.  Not exactly ‘in charge,’ but you know how Nick Fury gets.”

Three scratches his head.  “Well, we can’t build it _for_ them.  So they’d need a decent astrophysicist, a very smart engineer, and a very open-minded wave-theory physicist.”

“From Thor’s stories of Earth, his Jane is an astrophysicist,” Frey says.  “A scientist who studies the way stars move and interact, yes?  She has been studying the bridge phenomenon and the paths between worlds.”

“Perfect.”

Steven looks out at the stars.  “We’re on a schedule.  We need a working conduit between Earth and Asgard within the year.  So let’s work on it from both ends.”

Three puts the projector away and grins.  “You’ve got an idea.”

“I know a ‘very smart engineer’ and a ‘very open-minded wave-theory physicist.’  To my experience, throwing them in a room together with an idea of what you want can net you anything from a death-ray to an inter-dimensional communicator.”

“Tony and Reed?”

“Tony and Reed.”

“That ought to be fun.”

Steven should have known it wouldn’t be.

Three stays behind to help Frey negotiate, so it’s all up to Steven and his fairly subversive personal resonance.

He stands in a very official building full of black-suited agents and doesn’t fidget with Magellan.  Sure, the Asgardians made contact with the Network a couple thousand years ago, but these people, the ones on _Earth_ , aren’t technically ready for First Contact.  The designation of a Keeper for their bundle is still years away from this point.

Magellan is a Dumb Node, and therefore can’t answer anything interesting without Steven, but war-like cultures on the cusp of readiness can use brute force to puzzle out a lot of things they’re not ready for.

So Magellan is a familiar weight in a pouch on Steven’s belt, and he marches his way up to a certain desk outside a certain office and tries not to fall too much back into old military habits.

The woman behind the desk doesn’t even glance at him.

“I need to speak with Director Fury,” he tells her.

“Should have made an appointment,” she replies crisply.

And that right there, that sentence— _should have made an appointment_ —pretty much says it all, as far as incognito tuning goes.

He tries not to think about all the terribly uncivilized things he could do to get his way, all the things that the Wades would do.  He tries not to think about how they probably would have shot someone by now, and how refreshing that might be in comparison to his typical ask-for-milk-and-get-a-cow approach.

“Okay,” Steven says.  “Let me rephrase that.  Either you’re going to let me into that office, or I’m going to be inside the office without permission.  This is very, very important.”

She stops typing and finally looks him up and down.

“Please, ma’am,” Steven adds.

She blushes and fusses at her hair.  “Fine, but that old sourpuss is not going to be happy, and don’t say I didn’t warn you.”  Her hand presses some button on her desk.  “Urgent appointment, Director Fury,” she says in a sweet, personable tone, and jerks her head toward the office.

This Nick Fury is dark-skinned and bald, but no less physically intimidating than any other.  Nick Fury would be intimidating as a _cotton candy salesman_.

“Urgent…appointment…” the man says, bland and sharply enunciated.  “I don’t think I need to tell you just how urgent it had better be, or that you better start talking _fast_.”

Steven falls into a parade rest out of old, dredged-up reflex.  “Sir,” he says, also out of reflex.  “This planet requires a working long-distance intra-dimensional point-to-point conduit.  A…space-bridge.  And you need it to be finished within the year, preferably within the next five to eight months.  Because you need to start negotiating an alliance with the denizens of Asgard.”

To his credit, Fury does not start laughing and tell Steven to get lost.  He waves a finger through the air.  “And you know how to do that.”

It isn’t a question—which is good, because Steven couldn’t answer it if it were.  “I can tell you the three people that can make it happen and the raw material they’ll need.  I can leave them with some…very suggestive information.”

Fury grins wryly and turns to look out his window.  “But you _can’t_ just give us a blueprint and let us go.”

“Coming to you instead of going straight to the scientists is already stretching the boundaries of professional ethics, but I’m in a hurry.”

“Scientists,” says Fury.  “Three scientists.  Well, since you’re talking about space-bridges and Asgard, one of those has got to be Jane Foster.  The research we confiscated from her was what you’d call ‘very suggestive information.’  And if we’re going to build something impossible straight out of a sci-fi novel, the other two have got to be Stark and Richards.”

“Yes,” Steven says.

Slowly, Fury turns away from the window again.  “Now, why would I want to distract Stark when it takes so damn much time and effort to get him to concentrate in the first place?”

Steven withstands the one-eyed glare.  It’s really no worse than staring down most versions of Wolverine.  “You have five to eight months,” Steven reiterates.  “Even if I handed them the blueprints, the materials, and a diligent workforce, it will take nearly that long to build.  As for the stubbornness and brilliance of Stark men, Tony has always been easier to re-target than Howard.  Wave a puzzle at him and he latches on like a leech.”

Fury’s glare turns into a stare.  “I would ask your name, but I’m not sure you’d answer.”

Steven shrugs.  “I could answer, but it wouldn’t make any sense to you.”

“Try me.”

“Steve Rogers LF228-Omega.”

“Implying that there are a lot of other people with the name Steve Rogers out there.  Makes sense.  Steve is somewhere around the hundredth most popular first name in this country, and Rogers is around the fiftieth most popular last name.”

Steven grins.  “Yes.  _But_.  Do you really think I need a two-letter prefix, a three-digit number, and a Greek-letter suffix just for that?”  He pulls Magellan out of its pouch.  “Magellan, excluding myself, how many people in the current timeline are named Steve Rogers?”

 _~457.~_

Fury looks at Magellan.  “Two letters, three digits, and a Greek letter.  That’s over sixteen _million_ combinations.  What do you need all that for?”

Steven raises Magellan.  “When,” he answers.  “And where.  And _elsewhere_.  Can I trouble you for some paper?”

Blank-faced and credulous, Fury slides some letterhead across his desk.

“Magellan, print instructions for crystallizing vibranium into Bifrost.  Then print rudimentary explanations of Bifrost-based point-to-point non-lateral flatscale timesliding and ether-resonance pathing.  And then give them the path-relative coordinates to Asgard.”

A brief flash of lights while Magellan retrieves the entries from the CDB, a beep when it’s done.  He holds it out over the paper and waits while it burns a page worth of information before he flips the sheet and waits again.

“There are eight other worlds out there that you can access by ether-resonance pathing,” Steven tells Fury.  “I’m giving you the coordinates to _one_ of them; I recommend you don’t go poking around, because there are things on some of those worlds that could turn Earth into an ugly black rock if you make them angry.”

Magellan beeps again when it finishes the print order.  It’s ten pages, front-and-back.

“Show it to Reed first,” Steven suggests.  “So he can ramble enthusiastically at Tony.  It’s always easier to shift his focus if another scientist is rambling enthusiastically.”

Fury heaves a deep sigh and scowls at the ten pages of highly classified scientific information.  “And it has to be Stark?” he says in the tone of one long-suffering.

Steven raises his eyebrows.  “Only if you want it in the next decade or so.  You and I both know—given sufficient motivation and a big enough pile of spare parts, that man can build _anything_ , and years before anyone else even thinks it’s plausible, let alone _possible_.”

“The last thing that overgrown narcissistic toddler needs is to hear somebody say that aloud.”

Steven doesn’t agree, but he knows he’s a minority.  He shrugs.  “If you’ll excuse me, Director Fury, I have to get back to Asgard and make sure my colleague is working instead of drinking.”

 

 **.End.**


End file.
